How to Apply Your Makeup in 15 Minutes: Quick Makeup Tips

Quick, you have to do you makeup in 15 minutes for a big event, what do you do? Oh yeah, and you have to do it all in an airport bathroom. The thought has me hyperventilating a bit. Professional makeup artist Erin Parsons recently faced this beauty predicament. Of course, she slayed the challenge, and there are pictures of Gigi Hadid to prove it.

After flying from New York to London for each respective city's fashion week, Parsons and Hadid faced some travel difficulties. "We had time allotted for glam, but the plane was delayed two hours," Parson tells Allure. This cut into that time, and Hadid had to be on-time for a BBC Radio 1 interview. "Basically, the only choice we had was to get makeup and hair done quickly, so we ran into the bathroom," Parsons adds.

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Not only did Parsons have to improvise to do makeup in 15 minutes, she also had to deal with the effect flying has on skin. "Because the skin gets really dehydrated after a plane ride, I wanted her face to look healthy and luminous," Parsons says. "Also because there was no time, I needed to devise a look that felt soft and pretty and enhanced her features without trying to be overly creative."

Once they landed in London, Parsons kept calm and carried on by doing some mixing and matching of products in her kit. She started off by combining foundation and moisturizer to give Hadid's skin added radiance. Parsons skipped Beautyblenders and brushes in favor of quickly massaging the base on with her hands. To add some color to Hadid's face, Parsons dipped into her custom lipstick palette. Instead of carrying around a bunch of tubes, she puts them all in one kit. She whipped up a pinky shade with a couple of the lipsticks on the back of her hand. Then, she brushed it onto Hadid's cheeks and eyes. For her lips, Parsons swiped on Maybelline's Baby Lips Color Balm Crayon in Toasted Taupe. Then, she was set. "Until I saw her in the daylight, I honestly didn't know if it looked good!" Parsons admits. Well, Erin, she looked amazing. I'm living for the monochromatic vibes.

In the rush of getting ready, Parsons decided to skip eyeliner, lip liner or "any products that require precision," she says. "I didn't even curl the lashes!" Instead, she literally put on one quick coat of mascara and barely added any product to Hadid's brows.

Parsons's success came down to multi-tasking and ditching tools. "I love using blush or lipstick on the eyes when I'm in a pinch," she says. And if you ever find yourself in the same position, she suggests focusing on one feature and downplaying the rest. "I love a completely bare face with a perfectly applied vivid lip color," she says.

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